She studied sociology at Karnatak University in Dharwad, and earned both her bachelor's and master's degrees there.
[1] Bantwal married her husband in an arranged marriage and the couple moved to New Jersey in the United States in 1974.
After completing that degree, Bantwal began a job at the New Jersey Department of Labor, where she would work for the next 19 years.
[5] Bantwal's plots feature women's issues like arranged marriages, cross-cultural stories from the Indian diaspora, and New Jersey settings.
[7][8][9] She has received some criticism for her focus on commercial and genre fiction, but she sees her books as a useful way to introduce a consciousness of cultural issues, especially those that affect women, to large audiences.